Latest / Sober Readings / A Spiritual Kindergarten
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- Scott Hayes: Morning. Today is Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of June. My name is Scott, and this is Sober Readings. Let's begin today with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. From Daily Reflections, June 24, a spiritual kindergarten. We are only operating a spiritual kindergarten in which people are enabled to get over drinking and find the grace to go on living to better effect. That's on page ninety five from As Bill Sees It. When I came to AA, I was run down by the bottle and wanted to lose the obsession to drink, but I didn't really know how to do that. I decided to stick around long enough to find out from the ones who went before me. All of a sudden I was thinking about God. I was told to get a higher power, and I had no idea what one looked like. I found out there are many higher powers. I was told to find God, as I understand him, that there was no doctrine of the godhead in AA. I found what worked for me and then asked that power to restore me to sanity. The obsession to drink was removed and one day at a time, my life went on and I learned how to live sober. From twenty four hours, June twenty-four, AA Thought for the Day. Alcohol is our weakness. The origin of our alcoholism can be largely attributed to our unstable emotions. We suffer from mental conflicts from which we look for escape by drowning our problems in drink. We try through drink to push away from the realities of life. But alcohol does not feed, alcohol does not build, it only borrows from the future, and it ultimately destroys. We try to drown our feelings in order to escape life's realities, little realizing or caring that in continued drinking we are only multiplying our problems. Have I got control over my unstable emotions? The meditation for the day. When I let personal piques and resentments interfere with what I know to be my proper conduct, I am on the wrong track and I am undoing all I have built up by doing the right thing. I must never let personal peaks interfere with living the way I know God wants me to live. When I have no clear guidance from God, I must go forward quietly along the path of duty. The attitude of quiet faith will receive its reward. As surely as acting upon God's direct guidance, I must not weaken my spiritual power by letting personal piques upset me. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may not let myself become too upset. I pray that I may go quietly along the path I have chosen. Today's meditation from touchstones. The only intrinsic evil is lack of love. John Robison. When we have feelings of guilt or self hate, we have spiritual problems. It is a time to turn to our program for help. In the early stages of recovery, we may at times feel more shameful than we ever did before simply because we're becoming honest about how we feel. We may even become ashamed of our guilty feelings, and then the problem escalates. Lack of love for ourselves is at the heart of our problem. We cannot become self-loving by force of will, but we can stop being so willful by simply yielding to the care of a loving God. At those moments we do not feel deserving of love, but we can stop fending it off. Perhaps God's love is coming to us in the concern of a friend or partner. Maybe it comes in the warm sunshine or in the smile of a child. As we yield to it, we take a spiritual leap into a world we don't control and we didn't create. But we can be healed by it. Today I will surrender to the love that comes from the world around me and let it teach me how to love myself. And for today's final reading, I'm reading from a book called Forming True Partnerships How AA members use the program to improve relationships. And this writing is from chapter four, which is titled On the Job. So this one is titled Serenity Chair, and it was written in May of 2001. My place of employment for the last twenty five years offers me the best opportunity to apply the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have spent more time here than anywhere else over half my life, mostly practicing my character defects. Like anything else practiced repeatedly, it makes perfect after all. I have gotten very good at being selfish, self centered, full of self pity, and dishonest. It has been difficult to change in this part of my life. What I do today is try and apply the principles, the key word being try. I have experienced growing pains in sobriety, but gratefully God has given me the willingness to persevere. I have gone through the twelve steps with a focus on my work relationships, which revealed the deep seated feelings I bring to the table, the main one being fear. These feelings get triggered constantly throughout the day. The opposite of fear is faith. And since both cannot live in me at the same time, I practice faith and try to stay in the moment, because that is where I find my higher power. I keep reminders around my desk at work, like a small picture of a chair on the beach with the first line of the Serenity Prayer, which reminds me to pray and ask for help. Inside my desk, I keep AA pamphlets reminding me just for today and to let go and let God. I also keep a copy of the story on acceptance from the big book close at hand. I use program words as the passwords on my PC, such as patience and serene. Frustration and fear may always rear their ugly heads. It is what I do with them that counts. I pause when I get agitated, take some deep breaths, invite God into the situation, sit quietly, and then re-enter the moment, which I often find is now a new one. This morning, my reading said, The best way out of a situation is through it. In my meditation, I asked God, What is it that you are showing me at work? What is it that you want me to do? After sitting quietly, the word that came to me was humble. I know this had to be from my higher power, as this wouldn't be the word I would conjure up. Surrender used to mean giving up or giving in. Today, it means accepting whatever is in this moment. That is my destination. And that was written by Elaine L in South Amboy, New Jersey. And again, that's from a book called Forming True Partnerships: How AA Members Use the Program to Improve Relationships. And it's actually published by the AA Grapevine. So that's gonna do it for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you enjoyed those readings. If you did, please kick click that like button and subscribe to the show. And also, if you'd like to be a guest reader on the show, just send me an email at soberreadingswithscmail.com. We can certainly make that happen. And if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today, just go to my website, soberreadings.com and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. And remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting. Keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.